August 2016

May 24, 2006

His reaction to the outrage in Congress over the raid on William Jefferson's office is "I say, search 'em all. Now."

Whatever the merits of the Congressional protests, the idea of an unchecked executive branch and a "search 'em all" mentality is not very funny.

We live in parlous times. For a law professor and widely-read commentator to shout "screw the Fourth Amendment" as the country debates issues like the NSA and phone records is just messed up.

Search 'em all. Now.

Would that be a putsch, or a coup?

Instapundit ends by saying members of Congress "should remember that the Constitution forbids titles of nobility, too, despite their effort to transform their positions into something very much like that."

"Whatever the merits of the Congressional protests, the idea of an unchecked executive branch and a "search 'em all" mentality is not very funny. "

You're on a roll today, Ed. "Stretch" seems far too diminished a description of your points. And it's pretty clear there is no such thing as a cheap shot when it comes to Glenn, isn't there?

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/007048.php

Key points:

"This can't be the same Congress that issues subpoenas for all sorts of probes into the executive branch and the agencies it runs. Does Congress really want to establish a precedent that neither branch has to answer subpoenas if issued by the other, even if approved by a judge -- which this particular subpoena was?"

Er, I think the 4th ammendment was complied with in the search of Jefferson's office. It was a search warrant issued by a federal judge. A felony is an exception to the speech and debate clause on which the Speaker hangs his hat. Sorry Denny but you are wrong. Let's say the FBI had probable cause that 10 kilos were being stored in the office of a member. Any question? The chambers of Federal Judges have been searched in the past.
This is a silly argument. Reynolds has a link in his post to a piece by Orrin Kerr. Suggest you read it.

Ed, I think the nub of the congressional objection is not so much that the 4th Amendment was violated, but that even warranted executive searches of Congressional offices violates the separation of powers.

"Ed, I think the nub of the congressional objection is not so much that the 4th Amendment was violated, but that even warranted executive searches of Congressional offices violates the separation of powers."

How so? The Executive Branch went to the Judicial Branch and made its case for a search warrant. Seems like the balance of powers was kept intact.

Now if the Executive Branch went ahead and acted all on its lonesome, then yes, that would be a breach of the balance.

[["This can't be the same Congress that issues subpoenas for all sorts of probes into the executive branch and the agencies it runs. Does Congress really want to establish a precedent that neither branch has to answer subpoenas if issued by the other, even if approved by a judge -- which this particular subpoena was?"]]

Bubba, just curious -- how many subpoenas Congress has issued since George W. Bush has taken office? And how does that compare with the administrations of past prsidents?

I couldn't find a comprehensive answer -- I'd probably need to go to Washington and dig through the paperwork to get that -- but here's what I did find:

This article from The New Republic says that under Clinton, a single Congressional committee, House Government Reform, issued more than 1,000 subpoenas to the executive branch, collecting more than 2 million pages of paperwork and spending millions of dollars.

Democrats on the [House Government Reform] committee said the panel issued 1,052 subpoenas to probe alleged misconduct by the Clinton administration and the Democratic Party between 1997 and 2002, at a cost of more than $35 million. By contrast, the committee under [the current chairman, Virginia Republican Thomas M.] Davis has issued three subpoenas to the Bush administration, two to the Energy Department over nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, and one last week to the Defense Department over Katrina documents.

Now, the source for this information is Democrats, so I'm taking it with a grain of salt. But I also note that no one seems to have contested the accuracy of this information. In the current political environment, I'm sure that if the information had been wildly inaccurate, Davis or someone else would have raised a stink. Note also, that Davis himself concedes that Congressional oversight of the administration has been inadequate.

Maybe Congressional Republicans are squawking about the Jefferson search (which I don't have a problem with as long as the law is followed, by the way) because they have guilty consciences.

You know, if the fact that there is a D by the name throws you off, you could just read the Congressional Record. Its not like the GOP didn't blow their wad chasing Clinton's weenie to the tune of 200 million taxpayer dollars, while the lot of the impeachment crowd turned out to be egregious whoremongers, gamblers, masochists, reprobates, drunkards and thieves. All they had was a rented pair of balls between them. And instapundit is a disgrace to the legal profession and general decency in the world. Spokoinie Nochie.

Ed, I think you overreacted a little bit. I think Glenn's point is that there are a lot of really serious illegal searches going on in people's homes, just Google "Cory Maye"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Maye
Reynolds is a "govt keep your hands off me" Libertarian, and is drawing a distinction between an office and home. I have no expectation of privacy at my office if my employer wanted to look through my stuff (or read my email sent from a work computer).

What is worse, accepting a 100k bribe, or searching to find evidence of such bribe?

"Well, you were the one who suggested that 1) Congress was playing a diligent oversight role and 2) that somehow related to the rightness or wrongness of the search of Jefferson's office."

No, that wasn't my intent.

My point is that Congress and its members are not exempt from having supoenas served. The Constitution is specific about what special legal privileges the members of Congress enjoy, and the search of Jefferson's office clearly is not prohibited.

William F. Buckley has has checked his copy of the Consttution and finds nothing tghat prohibits the search of a Comgressmans office. He explains that Hasert and Peloi are reaching when they say the search was unconstitutional.